Dive Brief:

• New digital tools are streamlining portfolio assessment for teachers and students, District Adminstration reports — especially when it comes to low- or no-cost platforms like the Google Tools suite.
• Now that ESSA shifts regulatory power back to states, more may embrace the use of alternative methods like student portfolios in annual assessments, and digital portfolios can also be used to track assignments.
• Unlike standardized testing, portfolios also show how learning happens over time, adding dimensionality, more details, and nuance to a student's progression.

Dive Insight:

At a recent Education Writers Association conference in Boston, experts discussed new standards and guidelines under ESSA and how states will tackle general accountability, including new innovative approaches. One way that online portfolios and digital tools might help is with English literacy assessment, a topic that has elicited mixed feelings from English language learning advocates under the Every Student Succeeds Act. ELL supporters have expressed concerns over parts of the law that include the abandoning of federal accountability measures specific to English language learners.

In January, Gabriela Uro, director of ELL policy and research at the Council of the Great City Schools, told Education Week that she believed many states don't have the capacity to carry out what ESSA now mandates for ELL. That includes creating new accountability systems that track progress in tandem with their counts of students newly proficient in English. The number of students who need ELL programs continues to rise in the U.S.